This ongoing online intervention explores the "online" digital age we live in and how it can be viewed through so many lenses (or networking platforms). My work also addresses the dissemination of art and ideas, networking, the flanneur and scopophilia; these elements are constantly in flux with eachother, through the sexualized ads on the side bars or the challenge of reaching the most people without paying for a "premium" account on a "free" networking site. I based my exploration in music, which is very personal to me because I am a recording engineer, an artist, a DJ and music enthusiast.

I created a musical group called 'The Smash Bros.' The group members are, myself, Stephen Surlin (aka Shy Guy) and my brother Tony-James (aka Noam Chompsky). The lives of our characters or alter-egos exist in a solely digital dimension. All of our music, communication with people, visual or writing ...

Full Description

This ongoing online intervention explores the "online" digital age we live in and how it can be viewed through so many lenses (or networking platforms). My work also addresses the dissemination of art and ideas, networking, the flanneur and scopophilia; these elements are constantly in flux with eachother, through the sexualized ads on the side bars or the challenge of reaching the most people without paying for a "premium" account on a "free" networking site. I based my exploration in music, which is very personal to me because I am a recording engineer, an artist, a DJ and music enthusiast.

I created a musical group called 'The Smash Bros.' The group members are, myself, Stephen Surlin (aka Shy Guy) and my brother Tony-James (aka Noam Chompsky). The lives of our characters or alter-egos exist in a solely digital dimension. All of our music, communication with people, visual or writing will be done digitally on the internet. My artists statement of the piece is below:

An experiment in online digital networking, how it can be done, it's results and it'seaffects. By creating an online network involving over 10 music/social networking sites, for my online musical personae, I can engage the digital lives of others in a style and scale that is a very recent phenomenon. In my performance piece I will be creating a musical group featuring myself, Stephen Surlin and my brother Tony James Youssef. The group is called “The Smash Bros.” based on the largely popular video game “Super Smash Bros.” for the Nintendo 64 game system. The music will consist of remixes of music from some of Nintendo's most popular characters, including: Mario, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox and Cpt. Falcon. The subject of Nintendo, especially that of Super Smash Bros, is very culturally significant for me and my brother. Video games have been a link between my and his past and present, a sense of familiar nostalgia and fun. “Super Smash Bros.” is especially important because that is both of our favourite games, the first version of the game was released in April 26, 1999 when I was 13 and Tony James was 3. Throughout the years we had separate yet similar experiences with the game and Nintendo culture. Soon after that the second instalment “Super Smash Bros. Melee” was released in December 3, 2001 when I was 16 and Tony James was 6. Though within the space between the release of the second and third instalment's of the trilogy, Tony James was able to play enough of the game with his piers that by the time the third version came out, “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” released in March 9, 2008, we were of equal skill and experience; since, as I grew older I was spending less time playing the newer versions. So as it stands today in November of 2009, I am 23 years old and Tony-James is 13 and we have become avid players of the newest release, causing us to have a revived connection through the time spent having fun together.

The “lo-bit” music of the earlier Nintendo systems (N.E.S. [8-Bit], Nintendo Gameboy [8-Bit], Super N.E.S. [16-bit] and Nintendo 64 [64-bit]) sparks the connection to the origins of the video games we grew up on and the levels and abilities of digital music making and culture. The restrictions of 8-bit sound with the ability to only support 5 channels of audio, the way it is for the N.E.S., influenced my interpretations of music production methods and sounds. As the years went by I was introduced to new forms of musical genres because of the hybridization and re-appropriation of musical styles and genres by Nintendo's composers, to name a few: Classical, Jazz, Metal, Various Latin, African, Japanese Traditional, New Age and more. In my work with “The Smash Bros.” I am once again re-appropriating these genre's and making hybrid mash-ups using popular musical styles of today's musical underground. In remixing these songs I am putting my mark on the music I was passively experiencing as a youth, I am reflexively communicating my experience to as many people as I can through digital means. Wikipedia defines Reflexivity as a “circular relationships between cause and effect. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional; with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a situation that renders both functions causes and effects. In sociology, reflexivity therefore comes to mean an act of self-reference where examination or action 'bends back on', refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. In this sense it usually refers to the capacity of an individual agent to recognize forces of socialization and alter his or her place in the social structure.”

Our group also employs the aesthetics and ideologies of contemporary and "old-school" Hip-Hop. We rap about our lives, intersected with the lives of Nintendo characters. Though Hip-Hop allows us to forge an identity that has an in your face feel to it, and the elements of re-appropriation and remix culture is significant and strong within that genre.

Through my online performance and networking I hope to engage and intervene into in many peoples online reality/life. This will spread my artistic activity and will help me communicate my reflexivity and through a kind of "Remix Culture" progress the cycle of cultural understanding and re-interpretation.